British Airways OpenSkies Boeing 767 diverts to Ireland after toilets break

A flight from the US to Paris was diverted to Shannon Airport in the mid-west of Ireland on Monday following a "serious problem" with the aircraft toilets which made them unusable.

Passengers on board the Boeing 767-300 aircraft, which is estimated to be approximately 26 years old, were reported to have had an "urgent need" to use the airport's toilets, so the pilot made a request for the unscheduled landing at the County Clare-based airport.

"It's a very strange thing to come through Shannon for but that's the case," the pilot told controllers at the airport, according to the Irish Mirror.

Carrying 172 passengers, the plane from Newark, New Jersey (just outside New York) landed at around 7.30am at Shannon Airport, where engineers were on standby to service the aircraft's toilets. It resumed its journey to Paris's Orly Airport at around 9.38am.

The flight, operated by OpenSkies (a transatlantic airline owned by British Airways), was about 600 kilometres south-west of Ireland and about 90 minutes from Paris when the crew decided to make the landing.

The latest incident isn't the first time a plane was forced to be diverted due to toilet-related issues.

Back in 2013, a Lufthansa flight from Los Angeles to Munich was forced to make an unscheduled landing at Shannon Airport to empty the aircraft's waste tanks.

Last year, a BA flight to Dubai was forced to return to Heathrow Airport because of a "smelly poo" reported in the toilet. The pilot announced that the long haul flight could not continue due to health and safety concerns over pungent odour emanating from plane's toilet.

In 2014, a Virgin Australia flight from Los Angeles to Sydney had to return to its US departure point three hours after take off due to a problem with the "fresh water overflow system".